


The Promise

by Papapaldi



Series: Series 12 [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Basically the Doctor monologues and is Sad, Dark!Thirteen, Gen, Oneshot, Telepathic stuff, mind wipe, post Spyfall, so much angst you wouldn’t believe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22155166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papapaldi/pseuds/Papapaldi
Summary: The Doctor deconstructs a promise she made to herself the last time she was dying, and makes a new one in its place.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Dhawan!Master, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair
Series: Series 12 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647982
Comments: 35
Kudos: 227





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note: this is the only one in the series I would consider not canon-compliant, just because the angst goes a little Too FarTM (also it directly contradicts For the Glory of Ash and Bone)   
> Still, I like it, so here it is!

She stands, bathed in blue, with three pairs of eyes boring holes into her back. Inquisitive eyes, reproachful, skeptical. Dissatisfied. She thinks that’s probably fair enough. 

Behind her, the ship puts on a pale imitation of its usual golden hue – which is partly her fault, because the strength of her anguish resonates within the temporal engines. The ship mourns with her. It had been her home too. 

She’s taken on more than she can handle; three humans – she hasn’t had to deal with that many at once in a long while. It’s exhausting, because behind her back, they talk. They conspire. They formulate attacks in the form of questions and furrowed brows. It’s her against them, and it has been for a while now. Her against them; how had it ever come to this? _Friends or enemies?_ She’s always found it difficult to tell the difference. 

It would be easy, perhaps, to drop them back on Earth, waltz off with a grin and a lie through bared teeth, and never return. She’s done it before. 

But the promise she made claws at her, raging at her behind pale eyes. Eyebrows; with his lined face and harsh expression – easy to intimidate, with a face like that. Easy to lie. She craves that mask of lines, that icy stare. Maybe if she still wore that face, they wouldn’t ask so many questions.

He wanted to die, old Eyebrows had, and she’s starting to think that maybe he had the right idea. “Be a Doctor,” She had promised, but she doesn’t feel like the Doctor anymore. It all just feels like a game. 

And what was the rest of the promise? _Never be cruel, never be cowardly_... oh, but she is a coward – she’s been afraid of the dark since she was a boy, and she’s been running for – how long? About three thousand years, half of her assures (more like four and a half billion, the other half answers). And – though this is harder to admit – she is cruel. She’s crueller, colder, older. Be a Doctor, but the Doctor is a lie. Now more than ever, she’s hiding behind a title. For the first time, stranded without her friends, marooned in history, the cruelty had boiled over, and she’d found that she was full of so much of it that it scared her, but she couldn’t stop it from spilling out. At least the Master knows he’s cruel, he revels in the fact. She is something worse, because she’s convinced herself that her cruelty is some sort of justice. Some sort of twisted kindness, because the rules of time are not hers, and she is just a traveller. Walking away, in Montgomery and the Punjab, leaving a young boy to burn and a horde of innocent creatures to starve, that was cruel, but it was necessary, because sometimes she loses. Because the rules of time were never hers. 

Wiping Ada’s mind should have shaken her, it should have reminded her of pleading eyes and words of power; Donna, Clara, Bill. But it didn’t. _(If you ever stop, I think the universe might just go cold_ ). _And what if I go cold_ , she asks no one, _what happens to the universe then?_

_Always try to be nice._ This one, she has down to an art. She can’t remember ever being nicer. She’s bubbly and hopeful and sweet - at least, when her friends are around. When she’s putting on a show, because the Doctor is a lie. Even when she’s cruel, she’s sweet. She’s nice. All wicked smile and steely eyes, teasing. A trickster’s state. It was fun, at first, the youth, the constant movement and chatter and quirky quips. It was fun, because they didn’t question her. She revelled in their awe and their reverence in a way that filled her with sour guilt. She kept herself mysterious, confident, infallible. Vague. She stuck to the rules, when her friends were around. No weapons, no interference. Hasn’t she already seen where breaking the rules can get her? She is just a traveler; not a god or a monster or an impossible hero. Not anymore. She’s holding herself in, but the shell is too small. Jagged edges of her past jut through the edges of her silhouette, so she keeps her friends distracted. She keeps them moving and she never stays for tea, because the quiet is when questions are asked, and linear time makes her head ache and her fingers twitch. She’s hooked on the adventure. The lie. ( _It is Clara_ , she answers an old question, weary, _it is like an addiction)._

_Never fail to be kind_ . But she was always failing. She’s told her friends who she is, using empty words robbed of their usual pride and significance. Her voice and her manner had been waspish, impatient. Cruel. _(Questions?)._ Their unending curiosity, their kindness, it grated against her in a way that told her she was becoming something awful. She holds them, her new best friends, at arm's reach, and never closer, because she knows what happens when she lets herself get too invested. 

_Oh, and never tell anyone your name._ Well, that’s one promise she can keep - because everyone who can understand the cadence of her true name is dead. Killed by the only other person who still knows it. She will never be able to tell anyone her name again. 

_Laugh hard._ She’s done all sorts of laughing. Triumphant exclamations of wonder, because she’s just a traveller, and everything is new to these dark eyes, everything inspires hope. Belly-clutching, strained reels of laughter when her friends are cracking jokes. When they’re travelling, never stopping, never still. The real sort of laughter comes when she’s alone. Low, cruel chuckles to the enemy that roil in her gut, that make her feel alive. Wind whistling through newly spun blonde hair, cold air against new bared teeth, old tattered clothes hanging loose as she shed the one she was before. It was a good feeling, intimidating _._ Darkness biting through the nice. 

_Run fast._ She’s faster than ever. She’s running so fast that she can barely keep up with herself. Hands always moving, fixing, tweaking, tinkering. Mouth running off at a hundred miles an hour spouting tidbits and anecdotes that even she isn’t sure are truth or lie. That night on the train, she had hit the ground running, and hasn’t stopped since. Not until she’d taken a trip home, and she’s stopped dead in her tracks. All the adrenaline she’s been running off it gone, now. All she has is anger. 

_Be kind._ And that’s the most difficult part of all. Nice is just a show you put on to the people around you, and pretending is easy. Kindness is deeper, and difficult to fake. Difficult, especially, because she can feel him – the Master – in the back of her mind like an itch, gloating. The ghost of a laugh, bright and spitting and maniacal, because this is exactly what he wanted. Where he is, that dark, dead dimension, the walls are thin. He can see her. Exiled to an unknown dimension, foiled and hopeless and alone, he’s still won. Laughing. Gloating. _(Why would it stop)._ He tore apart the life she’d been building, ripped away the veil to show a glimpse of her true face; to her friends, and to herself. And she hates him. She hates him so much she wants to scream. Who is he but a reminder that it can never, ever stop. The grief and the running, and her, growing colder by the moment. A snarl twists at her face. She’s all anger, prowling, body wracked with energy that makes her want to break something, break him. The thought only makes him laugh harder. 

“Doctor?” A voice that doesn’t come from inside her head. A voice without the bite of the telepathic. Simple, human. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

It’s Yaz. The Doctor turns, blinking against the golden light of the console and its amber pillars. Graham and Ryan stand under its canopy, concern knotted through their features. Yaz is closer, because she’s the only one who’s brave enough. Her eyes are wide and dark and kind. The sort of kind she hasn’t been in a long while. 

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just tired, it’s been a long few days.” Five days, five planets. No trouble, just relaxing. She did it for them rather than herself, because her ideal vacation involved a lot more running and danger and mystery. Instead of sickly sweet ice cream and soft golden sands, she craved blood and ash, the slick oil and grease of weathered machines, the smell of fear and panic. The calm and emboldening feeling of being in charge, weaving together a solution, saving the day and bounding off on the next adventure. The past five days have been hell, because hell is quiet. Hell is being left to your own devices and thoughts and left to stew out in the sun like the the rocks baking on the shoreline by her faded luxury deck chair. Decaying. And all the while, his laughter, echoing inside her skull. 

“Doctor?” The voice tries again, impatient. 

“Hmm?” She murmurs, absently meandering back towards the console, looking for something to tinker with. Something to do with their hands to make herself look busy. Behind her back, she feels them shifting, casting glances at each other that speak a thousand words. Inwardly, she sighs. _Friends or enemies?_

Graham is the first to venture forth. “Look, I, err, _we_ ” – he amends, and nods pass between her friends, still behind her back – “we’ve been meanin’ to ask you something.” Of course it’s him, the most skeptical. She sees the way he looks at her, the way he worries. It’s true that she prefers the company of the young, because the young haven’t yet had the chance to learn what old eyes look like. They don’t recognise those eyes in her. “Why are you travelling with us, I mean really…” _Because you were there. You were human and you were there and I was lonely_ , she doesn’t say, because that would be cruel.

“Yeah, and who are you? We’ve tried asking’ so many times but you always dodge the question.” Ryan cuts across, emboldened. She turns around, away from the nothing she was doing with her hands. She stares at them and tries to look nice, but fails to look kind. 

“‘Cause we’re putting’ our metaphorical foot down, Doc,” Graham says, with a hint of a smile. Keeping it light. “We’ve been talkin’, and we think, if we’re gonna keep on travellin’ together, we should get to know who we’re travellin’ with.” There was a time when they wouldn’t have dared. They were so caught up in the adventure and so scared that it was going to end that they would never have asked her that question, not when she’d been so adamantly obvious about dodging it. They were afraid to lose her, but now, they know just how much power they hold. Her against them. They know she’s lonely, that she needs them just as much – maybe more – than they need her. Running from grief, from abandonment, from boredom. Human problems. Simple reasons. The other reason they are asking now is, she knows, because they’re afraid. She slipped up. All that time carefully calibrating the ultimate TARDIS experience; controlled, self-contained adventures, and never to those voluminous corners of the galaxy where the people knew her name; in reverence or in fear, because she’s just a traveller. Now they know that she can make mistakes, that she has a history, old enemies. It scares them, because they wanted, needed to believe that she was infallible. It made following her seemingly arbitrary and ever-shifting rules all too easy. Now, suddenly, travelling is difficult. Scary. Real.

“Not that we don’t want to keep on travellin’ with you,” Yaz assures her with that officer calm. “We just think we’re entitled to know a bit more, seein’ as you know us so well.”

“And I don’t mean some made up words that don’t mean anythin’ to us” Ryan says. Gallifrey, Kasterberous, Time Lord – what did any of that mean to them? Nothing, especially when her voice had been so cold, deflated, deflective. Trying to make them feel guilty for daring to ask. “I mean, why are you runnin’?” What a question... Of course, he doesn’t realise what he’s asking, the gravity of it. Boredom or exile or fear – or a mixture of all three. ( _And why_ , he asks, with his eyes, not his mouth, because he can’t quite articulate the feeling, _why do we trust you?_ ) It had been going so well. In her head, the Master laughs some more, and she doesn’t know whether he’s really there or if she’s imagining it. 

“And who were you before we met you?” Yaz asks, eyes softening, begging her. “Who were you before that night on the train?” It’s the final question that makes her muscles seize up and her eyes go cold. It’s what makes the anger bubble to the surface and the laugher break from background noise to a shrill cackling inside her head. She had been a white-haired scottsman, and she made a promise. A contract, and she’d broken every clause. 

“Why should I have to tell you?” She snaps. Maybe the ferocity should surprise her, but it doesn’t. Cruelty is becoming normal, for her, something that’s always lurking there, just below the surface. Yaz steps back from her stare, shocked. “I’m just a traveller, didn’t I already say, I’m nobody. Isn’t this enough for you?” she pleads, and he laughs. “Aren’t you having fun?” a different angle, because they can’t deny that. It’s been fun, it’s been lighthearted. It’s been good. “Why can’t you just let me be this?” her voice comes in strangled, breaking gasps, because there isn’t just cruelty under the surface, there’s grief as well. “Why can’t you just let me leave it all behind?” The ship rages beneath her; lights flashing, sparks spitting, crystalline pillars spiralling with blue and harsh red. It casts them all in shadow. The remnants of her voice rings out in the hollow space, the ship whirring back into silence, echoing her, understanding her like none of her new friends ever will. 

In the silence, Graham hums, his mouth folded into a line. Ryan is staring at the ground, chest rising and falling with subsiding panic. Worse, though, is Yaz, because she’s staring right at her. There’s no fear in her eyes, just kindness and a twisted sort of satisfaction. Her face says ‘I was right,’ and in her cruellest moment yet, the Doctor hates her for it. 

“I’m sorry – I…” she knows what she has to do, and all her previous faces are looking at her in disdain. In disgust. _Shut up_ , she swats their images away. They aren’t her, not anymore. The Doctor is a lie, and she is just a traveller. “Yaz, I’m really, really sorry,” she whispers, voice like silk. Beckoning. The girl can’t resist. 

“I know, it’s okay,” Yaz smiles, walking forwards. But the Doctor isn’t apologising for what she said, instead, she’s apologising for what she’s about to do, because she won’t get the chance after it’s done. More faces; Donna, Clara, Bill. Ada. She ignores them, and takes comfort in the cruelty of the act. 

The Doctor reaches out, and Yaz leans in to her touch, thinking that she’s offering comfort. The Doctor places outstretched fingers against her temple and searches her mind. As she sifts through her timeline, the act pressed into the space of a moment, it occurs to her that she could pick apart the strands of her memories and pluck out the parts that don’t fit. The doubts, the fear. The time she spent in that horrible dimension; lost and alone in the endless forest. She could make her better. The ship hums a dissonant note; a warning, and she realises that she isn’t quite that cruel. Not yet, anyway. She only takes the past minute. It’s barely a touch upon her mind, barely a dent, so she stays conscious. Yaz sways for a moment, dizzy, while the Doctor strides over to the two boys. They aren’t paying attention. They’re talking amongst themselves in low, harsh whispers. Behind her back. Her against them. 

There’s a moment when they notice her purposeful steps clanging against the metal floor, and they look up. They see her expression; flat and cold. Unyielding; and their eyes flash with fear. Graham opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, she raises both hands towards their heads. She takes Ryan in one hand and Graham in the other; outstretched arms reaching, the pads of her fingers running over the surface of their thoughts as their eyes brush closed. She could take back the memory of the Master, the panic on the plane, the bone-burrowing fear of being on the run - but she doesn’t. She thinks she will regret it later, when she’s grown a little colder still. 

In their moment of confusion, time rewinding, she takes her position at the top of the stairs. The blue light on her face feels right, it feels honest. She waits for their eyes to open and adjust, once again trained on her back, and she walks away before they can pose their carefully constructed questions. She leaves them standing under the fading gold of the console, sharing those transparent, conspiratorial glances, forming a new plan to get her cornered. Her against them. She makes a new promise, and the promise is this; they can never know. _You are nobody. You are just a traveller._

The Doctor is a lie, and they can never know. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Optional second chapter because I do like the first chapter as it's own self contained thing but ALSO, I wanted to write a conversation between the Doctor and the Master and it fit here so there :p

She drops them home. When she does it, she wonders if she’s only telling herself she’ll come back to stop herself from looking sad. They’re starting to recognise what she looks like when she’s sad – and sadness makes them ask questions. She thinks she will come back, though. She won’t last long without them. 

They are reluctant to leave, and their minds scream out apprehensive apologies. They think she’s leaving them, shoving them out of the way so she doesn’t have to share anything else. They’re wrong – and again, she wonders if she’s lying – she will come back. Brooding’s never done her any good, she knows that, seeing as she’s done so much of it. She’ll come back  _ (oh yes, I will come back).  _

She’s alone, which is something this body has never craved, and sets a course for nowhere. She drifts amongst the enveloping dark and startling lights of the time vortex, relishing the familiar feeling of time streaming past, twisting around her, pulling at her stomach so it churns with nausea. It does nothing to quieten the laughter. If anything, being alone has made it worse, because there aren’t any of those warm, linear human thoughts to soften the timbre of his hate. She’s alone, but she craves someone who understands her, who sees her, which is something her new best friends will never be able to provide – as long as she keeps her promise. What she really craves is  _ contact _ . 

She reaches down and finds him, trapped in the dark dimension of the Kasavin. She opens the door just a crack and is flooded with his anger ( _ rage, fear, I’mgoingtokillyou). _

“Oh, look at that,” she smirks, relishing in his fear. “Trapped in a prison of your own making.”

“Come to gloat, Doctor? I thought that was my job.” He tries to sound indifferent, brave, but his fear seeps through ( _ darkhere, nofeeling, dead).  _

“Serves you right.” Her tone is bitter, and the bite of anger opens up all the rest of it ( _ burning, eveyrthingdead, whywhywhy).  _ She cuts it short before he can see anymore of her pain. It’s been a long time since she’s ever spoken to one of her own kind like this, and she’s finding it difficult to keep the doors in her mind shut. 

He laughs, low and guttural. “I see you’ve been home.”

She may as well ask him. “Why?” ( _ Whywhywhy). _

“Oh, so many reasons, and do you know what the best part about knowing is?”

She rolls her eyes, because really, he never changes. “I think I can hazard a guess.”

“Not telling you.”

“I thought we’d left that place behind.” Hadn’t they promised each other, when they were children, to escape a life of duty and run across the stars? Her reminiscing comes through like (r _ edgrass, nobreath, everystar).  _

“Left it behind? You of all people must know that’s not possible, especially after what they did to you.”

“You mean,” and before she can stop herself, the memories come pouring out ( _ taptaptap, alwaysfollowing, mindburning, knucklesbleeding, whycan’tIjustlose _ ). 

There’s a flash of something like sympathy, because of course he understands. They tried to make him into a weapon during the time war, they planted a maddening message inside his head just so they could pull themselves out of the darkness like a great slumbering beast. No one has been hurt more by the Time Lords than the Master. “Yes, the confession dial. Why didn’t you tell me? Over seventy years and you never said a word.”

“It wasn’t important.”  _ (alwaysfollowing, fearconstantfearconstantpain) _

He chuckles, because he knows she’s lying. “Four and a half billion years of torture? Sounds important to me.”

“Careful, you’re starting to sound like you feel sorry for me.”

A smile pulls at his words. “Of course I feel sorry for you, I always feel sorry for you. You’re pitiful – especially now.” ( _ angerburninghatred, theyhurtyou, theylied, hurtmealwayshurtme). _ “How can you spare a tear for them after what they did?” His voice is whisper thin, gasping. This incarnation is so full of emotion that he sometimes seems as if he’s about to burst under the pressure. 

“Because it was my home, and yours.” (r _ edgrass, nobreath, everystar).  _

He pushes away the sentiment. “It was a sorry state you left it in, if you care about it so much. You didn’t think, did you – when you uprooted the ancient powers of that planet. You usurped Rassilon, banished his council and then abandoned your post – you left the planet in shambles. Factions vying for power over the scraps that the Time War left behind. But, like I said, you didn’t think. All you could feel was anger.”

It tumbles out before she can stop herself.  _ (solong, secondsineternity, claraclaraclara, hadtopay). _

“Yes, Doctor, that’s  _ exactly  _ what I’m talking about. You know how it feels, you know why I had to do it – that anger… oh, and when you find out what caused it,”  _ (everythinglies, everythingwrong, thetimelesschild).  _ “Gallifrey was already doused in oil, so to speak, all I did was light the match. You destroyed them as much as I did.”

“Shut up.” A flimsy comeback. She’s usually quite good at banter, but she feels drained. Around her, the console swirls with blue melancholy. 

“And you know, I think we were always meant to destroy it – that place that’s caused us so  _ much _ pain.”

Her face twitches up into a snarl. She feigns indifference that he sees right through. “Right, so they’re gone. Let’s pretend for a moment that I forgive you, what now? Why are you still trying to kill me?”

“Because, after tasting the ash of a world on fire, I was reminded of old times – you were too, I’d expect. How many times have you imagined it burning, Doctor? How many times have you imagined the corpses?” 

_ (2.47billion, alldeadmyfault, lastofthetimelords). _

“And last you are, unless you count me,” he sneers, and she can feel it, the twisted joy he takes in watching her suffer. “You’ve trapped me here in the void, so right now, you really are the last. Savour the feeling. I suppose it feels like coming home.” 

She suppresses a snort of laughter, because now she realises why only thirteen versions of the Doctor answered the call to seal Gallifrey in its time-lock on the last day of the war. Everyone after Eyebrows knew, knows, will know – that it’s pointless. Eternity stretching out, not even the regeneration limit to give her the comfort of an end anymore. She’s already settling back into that old slump, old weariness, the old brooding hunch and furrowed brow of being the last. “Just like old times,” she sniffs, but stuffs away her tears. Maybe later, when he won’t feel them too. 

“But you see what I’m trying to show you? I’m showing you that we’re not so different.” Standing in a graveyard with an army for a Birthday present, squatting in a scrapheap with heads pressed together  _ (thelast, angerlove, runningchasing, whywoulditstop?).  _

“I’m nothing like you,” she lies, resolute. “I thought you’d changed – or did all that time in the vault mean nothing to you.” 

He grapples with something, mind screaming out ( _ shedoesn’tknowthetruth, can’tadmit, whatI’vealwayswanted).  _ The truth struggles out all the same. He can’t control himself, always so impulsive. “I wanted to stand with you, you know.” He laughs, but not with malice. It’s resigned, sad. “I may as well admit it now; here in the dark. I stabbed myself in the back and he stabbed me right back” he chuckles, “which, to be fair, is the only person I’m okay with killing me.” ( _ tearsreflectingfire, nostars).  _

_ (I’dhopedtherewouldbestars).  _ “I never knew,” how quickly the pity comes back. Pity to loathing, love to hate; they swing between the two like a metronome keeping beat. “I’m sorry.’

“Keep your pity,” he spits.  _ (shediedalone) _ . 

“What changed? You wanted to stand with me, and now this?”

“My dear Doctor, ask yourself, would you have listened if I called upon you? This version is so secretive, so adamant on keeping the past buried. As if you could run, as if I could. I’m here to remind you who you are.”

“Missy,” she whispers, and he screws up his face in revulsion.

_ (Notanymore, deadinthefirewatchingitburn, laughing, wrongwrongwrong). _

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, but it feels hollow. 

“No, let me tell you something,  _ Doctor,”  _ he spits her name, love to hate, oscillating. “Now that I’m stuck here in nothingness; without hope, without  _ witness _ –”

“Stop it,” she murmurs.  _ (virtueisonlyvirtueinextremis). _

“No – why should I have to change if you don’t? Why should I stop killing them if you won’t stop collecting them?” a smile spreads across his lips; wide, gloating ( _ gotyou).  _ “You know, when I kill them, at least I’m honest about it. It’s a simple transaction. I’m going to kill you; they might scream, or plead, or at least have a spark of fear in their eyes. There’s an understanding between us, and I generally make it quick. Not you, though, you kill them ever so slowly, picking them apart. You don’t say ‘I’m going to kill you’ you plead; ‘come with me,’ and don’t pretend you don’t use those subtle telepathic pulls, a dash of hypnotism – not on purpose, of course (at least that’s what you tell yourself) it’s in the nature of our species – they’re just too weak to resist it. They don’t fear you, Doctor, they love you, their killer, and I think that’s a whole lot worse than anything I’ve ever done.” 

_ (Waitingsolong, churnedupintoamonster, Billbillbill).  _ “You did that to her, not me.”

“I didn’t kill Bill, I saved her. I protected her from the conversion process for ten years, and I handed her over in the moment before you arrived – I did it to prove a point. This very point. It’s the same reason I left your  _ fam,”  _ he sneers, “to die on that plane. You asked when this stops for me, but did you ever bother to ask when it stops for you. I revel in carnage and you revel in, what? Grief? Self-pity? You inflict this same sick cycle on yourself over and over again and you can’t stop. Neither can I. I know what it feels like you to – the travelling, the wonder you put on the faces of those lesser creatures as you drag them around, the sting of grief and guilt when you lose them – it feels like you’re in the right place, doing what you were made for. It gives you that twisted little buzz,” he hisses, “right in the hearts.”

“I was ready,” she chokes, still not crying, because she can’t let him feel it. No one but her will ever feel this pain. “I was ready to die. I thought I could be better, I made a promise –” it spills  _ (laughhardrunfastbekind, Ibrokeit, Ibrokeit).  _

“Oh Doctor,” he laughs, and it turns ugly, screaming out in the dark of his shrouded dimension. “There it is.”

She can’t stem the flow of her thoughts, after holding them in for so long.  _ (Theycanneverknow, ruleone, justatraveller, sortingoutfairplay, wouldyoubemynewbestfriends?).  _ “Stop it!” she cries, voice loud and biting through the whirring ambience of the TARDIS. The lights flare red, crystals swirling with crimson like boiling anger. 

“This one isn’t used to being angry, is it? It’s not used to losing control.”  _ (Itoldyoutolookforthespymaster).  _

Clutching at her chest, bile rising in her throat acrid like the taste of her past flooding back. And her friends staring, the bomb clock ticking down and she was powerless  _ (panic, terror, failure, can’tletthemseeme).  _

“I’ve had time to watch you. When no one’s looking your wonder turns to morbid curiosity, joy to manic glee, smiles turned sharp. I won’t pretend I don’t like it. It reminds me of me,” he cackles, his mind unhinging within her own  _ (andIhateyou, notsodifferent).  _ “You can’t keep hiding it,” he rasps between bouts of laughter, echoing around her skull. 

The red glow deepens. “I’m nothing like you.” 

“Keep telling yourself that, love.” A smile that reminds her so much of O; his quiet kindness, an edge she hadn’t noticed because she’d been too caught up in her own ego, but it was always there, staring her right in the face. “Are they playing nicely, now, your new best friends?”

Red to inky maroon, deepening, deepening, and she can’t stop the truth from coming through.  _ (theysawme, can’tletthemsee, shameguilt, hadtotakeitaway).  _

“Oh,” he draws the sound out  _ (that’smyname).  _ “You wiped their memories.”

She immediately jumps on the defensive; “Only a moment. I got angry and I snapped at them. I didn’t take anything else.” Her reasoning is flimsy, pathetic even to her own ears. 

“But you could have, and you want to. I can see it. It’s so easy isn’t it – and admit it, a little fun – to play around with their heads. They could be the perfect little pets, if you really want them to be. It would be so easy,” he taunts. 

“No, not again. Never again,” she lies, because she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to hold it together if they come asking again. Attacking. Her against them. 

“I’ve tried it myself you know, having companions. They can be such fun. I’ve taught some small minds some very important lessons, just like you. Isn’t it wonderful seeing them out there looking down on it all with such wonder, such hope, and tearing it all away.” 

“You’re wrong,  _ Master”  _ her turn to spit the name, and the metronome beat keeps on ticking a steady simple quadruple rhythm  _ (tick tick tick tick).  _

“Maybe you used to think that, but this you, I think, is starting to come around to my way of thinking. To you, they’re a distraction. They’re all part of the lie you tell yourself to cover up a broken promise.” 

He sees her, the only one who ever has. He sees her and she hates him for it.  _ (justatraveller, whycan’tyoujustletmebethis?).  _

“So you see, even in the void, I’ve still got you,” and he snaps the connection shut. The force leaves her ears ringing like the slamming of a door, and she screams. She hasn’t done that in this body – hasn’t done much of anything  _ real.  _ It’s all disguised actions following a set of parameters called a promise. Never cruel or cowardly, nice and kind and laughing and running. Even when she saw Gallifrey her grief was quiet, simmering, tears glistening but never falling, but now, when she screams it’s for them, and at them, for everything they’ve done to her. She screams at someone else too – at Eyebrows and his stupid promise. His sentiment.  _ Why can’t I just lose?  _

He’s gone now; left her completely alone. Not even his laughter to keep her company and spur her into anger. Just her, and the old and familiar feeling of being the last. And he’s right, it feels like coming home. 

**Author's Note:**

> I am so full of angst and I’m soooo happy we’re getting to see a darker side of thirteen and that we weren’t just reaching - her vague characterisation in series 11 was there for a reason!!


End file.
